


Is There A Ghost

by until_the_earth_is_free



Category: X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Charles Being Concerned, Charles is a Troll, Depression, Erik has Issues, Erik is a Father, Fluff and Angst, Ghost Charles, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-10 16:57:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5593861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/until_the_earth_is_free/pseuds/until_the_earth_is_free
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If this was a horror movie, Erik might have been worried for his health.  Unfortunately, Erik's life was probably one of those bleak indie tales of hardship filmed on a handheld camera that critics would describe as "raw", and so he worried only for his emotional stability, which was currently weak at best.</p><p>***</p><p>[aka. the fic where Erik, mourning the death of his wife, moves with his kids, Wanda and Pietro, to a house in the suburbs, haunted by the ghost of Charles, who quickly becomes quite concerned with Erik's happiness and wellbeing]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title of the fic comes from the song "Is There A Ghost" by Band of Horses.
> 
> WARNINGS: this fic deals heavily with grief and bereavement, and erik uses some ableist slurs to describe his own mental state

 

 

 

 

 

 

The worst thing about moving wasn't packing all your memories into cardboard boxes and leaving a part of your life behind forever. No, the worst thing about moving was having to unpack all those fucking boxes all over again.

It was eight in the evening. Erik had just wrangled the twins into their pyjamas and convinced them to brush their teeth and he could hear them bustling around in their finally-unpacked bedroom upstairs, arranging stuffed animals and toy robots on their new furniture. Erik looked back at the stack of cardboard boxes leaning against the doorframe between the yet-to-be-unpacked living room and kitchen and sighed. Maybe his mother was right: material possessions were a burden on the soul.

Erik pulled out a box that said "Living Room" in purple highlighter and opened it.

It was a mercy that the house had come with its own furniture. If Erik had had to unpack entire sofas, it was entirely possible he would have given up and forced his family to eat dinner on the kitchen floor.

He picked up the yellow ceramic lamp from the box and placed on the desk in the corner of the living room, before bending down to search for the nearest socket in the wall.

He heard a girlish squeal from the twins' bedroom upstairs.

"Wanda! Pietro!" he called out, still rummaging under the desk. "Keep it down, will you?"

There were only a few bumps and giggles in response, but at least they were a bit quieter than before. If Magda were still here, she would have abandoned unpacking to go upstairs and play with the kids, probably dragging Erik with her by the hand.

But Magda wasn't here. And Erik had two five year-olds to control and a house to move into.

"Aha!" he exclaimed, as he found a very dusty wall socket only a few feet away from the desk. He crawled out from under the furniture and stood up to grab the desk lamp's plug, when he realised the desk lamp wasn't on the desk.

That was weird. Erik could have sworn he'd unpacked the lamp and placed it on the desk. Where could it have gone?

After a minute of slightly baffled pacing about the living room, Erik spotted a spot of bright yellow ceramic: inside the box he had just opened.

Erik rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. He hadn't slept well for months. Four months, to be precise. Not since Magda-

There was an ear-splitting screech from upstairs that yanked Erik out of that thought spiral. With a yawn that sort of evolved into a sigh, he jogged up the stairs to the twins' bedroom where he saw Pietro holding his sister in a headlock and pulling her hair.

"Hey!" he shouted, marching over to the children and prying them apart. "No fighting."

"She started it," Pietro said, pouting.

"I don't care," Erik replied. "Apologise to your sister right now."

"Sorry, Wanda," Pietro muttered to the floor.

Erik rolled his eyes but he was not in a position to coerce his son into a more sincere apology than that.

"Wanda," Erik said sternly. "Apologise to your brother for whatever it was you did that provoked him."

"Sorry, Pietro," Wanda said.

Erik sighed.

He was reminded of a similar incident a year ago, when he'd told the twins that he didn't care who'd started the fight. Magda had smirked at him and told him later that he was sacrificing his political ideals and, if he had been true to himself, he should have held a hearing to ascertain which twin had 'started it' and doled out punishments accordingly. Erik had laughed and thrown a pillow at her.

"Daddy?" asked a small voice.

Erik looked down to see Wanda staring up at him with worry in her huge eyes.

He smiled at her in the most convincing way he knew how.

"I think it's time for bed, don't you?" he asked the twins, who both vehemently shook their heads. With a laugh that was only half-forced, he picked up a small child in each arm and walked over to their respective beds, tossing them playfully onto their mattresses.

Tucking them in gently, he placed a kiss on each of their foreheads and whispered.

"Goodnight, Pietro. Goodnight, Wanda. Daddy loves you."

And he turned out the light, letting his smile fall as soon as the darkness hid his expression.

 

 

Erik was far too tired to bother finding his own sheets and pillows in his bedroom boxes, so he decided to sleep on the living room couch, which at least had a bunch of cushions left over from the previous owners.

Slipping into his pyjama bottoms and keeping on the t-shirt he'd already been wearing, Erik picked up the picture frame he had set on the living room desk earlier and brought it with him to the couch. It was too dark to actually see the photograph, but it comforted him all the same to have it with him.

As Erik settled down to sleep, he thought he could hear a low whistling through the windows and creaks in the kitchen floorboards. A cold draught drifted into the living room and tickled Erik's toes as he lay there, eyes wide open and staring blankly into the darkness.

If this was a horror movie, Erik might have been worried for his health. Unfortunately, Erik's life was probably one of those bleak indie tales of hardship filmed on a handheld camera that critics would describe as "raw", and so he worried only for his emotional stability, which was currently weak at best.

He looked down at the photograph. In the darkness, Magda's usually smiling face was merely a dark ink blot in the frame. He clutched the picture frame to his chest and squeezed his eyes shut, determinedly ignoring the tear that trickled slowly down his right cheek.

 

 

* * *

 

 

When Erik woke up the next day, the picture frame was gone. He lurched upright, wildly looking around the couch for where he might have dropped it, before he noticed that it had been gently placed upright and facing him on the coffee table next to the couch.

Huh. Perhaps he'd put it there in the middle of the night and forgotten about it.

He glanced at his watch, which he'd worn through the night, and blanched when he saw that it was ten minutes past when he had planned on waking up. He was in such a rush to run upstairs to wake up the kids that he didn't even notice the yellow ceramic lamp that had been replaced on the desk and dutifully plugged in with the socket's switch on.

 

 

After the initial clamour of the morning to get the twins ready for their first day of their new school, the house felt strangely quiet and peaceful. This sense of peace seemed to have imprinted onto Erik, who actually managed to be productive enough to finish unpacking the rest of the house.

He was almost considering taking a nap on his newly made bed, when he heard a knock on the front door.

Trying not to feel put out, he walked to the front hall and opened the door. There stood a woman with black hair and electric-blue streaks with a bright red lipstick smile, holding out a wicker basket of cookies.

Erik tried not to stare.

"Hi!" the woman greeted cheerfully. "Are you Erik Len-sherr?"

"Lehnsherr," Erik corrected in a gravelly voice. "And yes that's me."

"Oh sorry," the woman said. "My name's Raven. I noticed a new name on the letterbox and I thought I'd say hello and welcome you to the neighbourhood."

"Thanks," Erik said, not sure if he should invite her in or not.

"This is for you," Raven said, holding out the basket of cookies, seemingly overlooking or just plain ignoring Erik's awkwardness.

"Thanks," Erik said again. Then, out of politeness, he asked, "would you like some coffee?"

"Oh no thanks," Raven replied, much to Erik's relief. "But I would _love_ some tea."

Erik blinked, before putting on a smile and letting the woman into the house.

Raven, as it turned out, was also an author. However, while Erik wrote sardonic pop economics books for the modern cynic, Raven wrote and illustrated children's comic books.

"You sort of have to be an author or another form of recluse to live out here," she joked. "It's oh so _Wuthering Heights_. Just wait for the snow to come in and trap us all in our houses."

Raven also revealed that she was the Lehnsherrs' closest neighbour: at a mere four hundred yards down the road, in a substantially larger house.

"It's been terribly lonely for the past year," she told Erik. Erik frowned: how old was this woman? She didn't look older than 25 but she spoke like a middle-aged duchess on a British mini-series. "I'm so glad someone decided to move into this house again."

"You knew the previous owner?" Erik asked.

Raven took a long sip of tea, staring at the wall directly above Erik's left shoulder.

"Well, yes," she said, finally, in a quiet voice. "This was my brother's house before he died."

 

 

* * *

 

 

Two weeks later, Erik had settled into a routine. Wake up. Get ready. Take the kids to school. Go home. Procrastinate on writing before maybe writing another 300 words. Forget to have lunch. Delete 200 of the 300 words written that morning. Pick the kids up from school. Have dinner. Put the kids to bed. Drink. Sleep fitfully.

Maybe it wasn't the peak of existence, but he was trying.

It wasn't really helping that Erik was losing his mind. He kept hearing bumps and scuffles around the house, especially at night, that definitely weren't the fault of the twins. Sometimes, he would write a paragraph of his new book and leave the room for some tea, only to come back and find this paragraph had been typed in bright orange font without him even realising it.

But however worried he was about his own sanity, Erik needed to ignore all the signs that he was losing it. It was bad enough during the first month after Magda's death, during which he only showered maybe five times and got out of bed every other day. Thank fuck for the generosity of his elderly neighbour and the nosiness of his way-too-involved-in-his-personal-life editor, Emma, that forced him to get his act together and even convinced him to move out of the city and start over in a new home.

The twins had gone through enough in the past four months losing their mother: he couldn't let them lose their father too.

Speaking of the twins, they were being suspiciously quiet at the moment.

Erik was stirring tomato sauce for a pasta dinner in the kitchen but he couldn't hear their childishly loud whispers or giggles. Weren't they outside just a few minutes ago?

Turning the stove down to low, Erik left the kitchen to stick his head out the window and shout to the small backyard.

"Kids!" he called out.

No reply.

Panic rising in his throat, he ran upstairs to their bedroom, which he found empty. Darting into every room on the top floor and then the ground floor, Erik could feel his chest constricting. How did he manage to lose his kids in his own fucking house? What if they had gone around to the front yard and wandered off into the road...

Then, cutting through the thick panic sticking in his bloodstream, he heard a soft voice.

_The basement._

In his terrified, sleep-deprived state, Erik wondered for one wild moment if it was his dead wife talking to him from beyond the grave.

 _They're in the basement, Erik_.

Which was when Erik realised that the voice was a delicate British tenor. Had Erik been watching too much British television?

But before he could even begin to think about the implications of hearing strange voices in his head, Erik found himself at the door to the basement, which he opened hastily. To his relief, he noticed that the light was on and he could hear Pietro and Wanda chuckling quietly. Erik all but sprinted down the rickety wooden stairs into the basement, where he saw the twins kneeling on the floor and leaning over something small between them.

"What are you guys doing here?" he asked, trying to temper his breathing into something calmer.

"Spiders!" Pietro exclaimed, cryptically, while Wanda pointed mutely at the small object on the floor. Erik stepped forwards and realised that they were crouched around a small glass, in which a small black dot was scuttling around.

"Okay," Erik said, ignoring their activity. "But please don't come down here again without telling me."

Then, feeling guilty at their mollified faces, he sighed.

"That's a really cool spider you found. Shall we find a jar for it?"

 

 

The spider was thereby named Natasha, after Wanda's new school friend. Pietro had wanted to name it Dash after the kid from _The Incredibles_ movie but, after staring at the lethargic spider sit motionless in the jar for a full minute, he had conceded to his sister's choice.

Erik smiled at his children, who were clutching their jar together like it was a precious piece of art that required two people carrying it at any one time. He felt warm in a way he hadn't felt for a while. Maybe, this family was going to be okay.

 

 

* * *

 

 

That night, Erik found himself staring at his picture of Magda again. He couldn't quite remember how he'd got here, sitting on top of his bed covers in his pyjamas, but he could barely bring himself to care.

He could remember when that picture was taken, when Magda and he had been walking along the New York highline and she had been nearly five months pregnant. It had been springtime and Erik had been happy. He remembered the group of three tourist girls he had asked to take their picture, and the way that the sun had reflected off the skyscrapers into his eyes, causing him to squint slightly in the photograph. He could still almost feel the warmth of her long dark hair falling gently over his hand when he had clasped her shoulder-

_I'm sorry for your loss._

Erik blinked and, to his surprise, he could see a full tear fall hotly onto his left hand.

_Please don't cry._

Erik looked around the room, narrowing his eyes at the dark corners and the door left half ajar. He'd been doing so well lately: why was he hearing voices now?

_I can't bear to see you upset, Erik._

The voice almost sounded genuine and Erik was suddenly hit by a hot crush of anger.

"Fuck off," he said to the empty room as loud as he dared in case he woke up the twins. "Leave me the fuck alone."

Hesitation tinged the air like electricity. Erik couldn't stand it.

He gently placed the picture frame on his bedside table before putting his hands over his ears and clenching his eyes shut.

"Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, fuck off," he muttered like a mantra, ignoring the hot tears welling up and splashing down his cheeks. He didn't care how crazy he was acting, talking to fucking disembodied voices like this: he just needed the voice to leave him alone.

And then there was a sudden coldness in the room, like a draught had just pushed through the doorway.

Erik slowly lowered his hands and relaxed his shoulders. The voice had gone.

Breathing heavily, he kicked his feet under the covers and turned off the light.

With difficulty, Erik attempted to sleep, unaware of another presence in his attic, sighing quietly and gently settling itself down to rest amongst the dust and cardboard boxes.

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik and Charles meet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: more dealing with grief, death, bereavement, etc

 

 

 

 

 

Raven visited again over the weekend, bringing with her homemade raspberry muffins, much to the twins' delight. Erik had hesitated at the size of these treats so soon before the twins' dinner, but after some serious pleading from the kids and doe-eyes from Raven, he had surrendered.

"Mom loves muffins," Wanda informed Raven, as she carefully unwrapped the paper casing of her treat. "But she usually puts chocolate in them."

Raven laughed, oblivious to the way Erik's hand had suddenly tightened around his mug of coffee.

"Well, I just can't compete with chocolate, can I?"

Wanda shrugged.

"These are probably the next best thing."

 

 

The twins were playing a make-believe game called "Escape" again, during which they play-acted an intensive plot that revolved around two young characters' daring escape from some great horror, usually in the form of a dungeon master or Mr. Bumble from that time they watched _Oliver!_. It was all very dramatic and required a lot of running around the garden, which Erik and Raven watched fondly from the dining room, where a sliding glass door divided them from the children.

Wanda was just clutching her leg, wounded by the sentries' arrows, and telling Pietro that he should go on without her, when Raven turned to Erik and spoke.

"If you don't mind me asking, what happened to Wanda and Pietro's mom?"

Erik froze.

"I'm sorry," Raven said quickly. "You don't have to answer if you don't want to."

Erik took a long sip of his coffee and let the warm liquid swirl in his mouth for a moment before swallowing and looking over at Raven.

"It's fine," he said gruffly. "She passed away four months ago."

"I'm sorry," Raven said.

Erik shrugged uncomfortably.

"If you ever need any help with the twins, or just need a break for a day, I'm very happy to be there for you."

Erik clenched his jaw and looked down at his coffee cup.

"Thanks," he said, and he meant it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

On Sunday morning, Erik ventured into the attic for the first time to see if Charles Xavier had left any spare light bulbs to replace the kitchen light that had burnt out.

It was strange to think about the previous occupant of this house as an actual person, instead of a vague concept that Raven sometimes spoke about. However, entering the dusty attic and seeing the boxes of possessions stacked higgledy-piggledy in the corner seemed to increase the man's physicality in Erik's mind.

Erik rooted around the room for a few minutes to see if he could find anything vaguely resembling a box that contained light bulbs, but to no avail.

He did find, however, a beautifully carved wooden chess set that looked like it was in the middle of a match. Erik stared at it curiously for a while, before moving the black bishop to pin the white side's knight to its queen, leaving behind a small clean circle in the dust where the bishop had been standing.

Next to this chess set were placed a few boxes that weren't taped up like the rest. Furrowing his brow, Erik unfolded the top of the first box, labelled "THESIS" in a horrible sharpie scrawl. In it, he found a well-worn novel-sized book entitled: _CFTR Gene Expression in the Airway and its Implications on Modern Medicine_ by Charles Xavier.

Erik raised his eyebrow. He had no idea what that meant but it sounded pretty heavy-duty.

Thumbing through the contents of the book and seeing pages of Greek letters and graphs confirmed this impression.

For some reason, he didn't feel that weird about rooting through some dead man's belongings. Maybe it was because he had already adopted said dead man's bed as his own. The boundary had already been crossed.

Underneath the book was a pile of moleskin notebooks, which were all filled with messy biro notes and various sketches. Literally filled: each page must have been 60% ink and 40% paper and they were nigh on impossible to read. The one legible page that Erik could find in his casual perusal was a pretty awful doodle of two old men labelled "double Felix". It probably would have been a lot funnier if he had known to whom Xavier had been referring, but Erik cracked a smile all the same, before turning his attention to the second open box: this one labelled "LOGAN".

Inside this one, Erik found four large flannel shirts rather messily folded, underneath which there were two loose polaroid pictures.

Erik wasn't in the habit of searching through strangers' possessions, but, to be fair, this was his house and he was quite curious.

Erik picked up the first polaroid and squinted at it.

The picture was of a heavily built man in a green flannel shirt holding a screaming cat at arm's length and looking at the camera with a look of utter horror. On the white frame under the actual picture, presumably Xavier's unintelligible scrawl had written "Logan vs. Nature". Erik smirked at that.

The second polaroid featured the same man, wrinkling his nose this time, as a much shorter man with floppy brown hair kissed him on the cheek and extended his arm towards the foreground, presumably taking the picture. It was a bit out of focus and half of the first man's left arm was out of the frame, but it was sweet. They looked sweet together.

Erik sighed, and felt a rush of sadness, like his mind had been washed over with cold blue watercolour paint. If Emma were here, she'd tell him he was probably projecting his own grief of Magda onto this dead stranger and it was more than a little weird.

Nothing forced him out of a funk like imagining Emma Frost breathing down his neck.

Erik sniffed, wiped his eyes roughly with the sleeve of his jumper and went back downstairs.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Erik felt like a bad father whenever he didn't have the energy to cook for his family, but the twins' excitement at eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch consoled him somewhat. If they were going to get scurvy, at least they'd be happy doing it.

As they sat around the dining room table, Pietro and Wanda seemed to be having a telepathic conversation through facial expressions and giggles. Erik watched them, amused, for a minute, before Pietro turned to him.

"Dad?"

"Yes?" Erik replied.

"Can we watch T.V. after lunch?" Pietro asked shyly.

Erik pretended to think about it, while Pietro and Wanda stared in anticipation.

"Alright," Erik said finally.

Pietro and Wanda exchanged a meaningful look. Erik furrowed his brow.

"Is there anything else?" he asked, feeling like he was missing out on some crucial information here.

"Can we watch _Inspector Gadget_?" Wanda asked suddenly.

"Sure."

Wait.

"Is that show still on?" Erik asked incredulously.

Erik had never watched a lot of television as a child, but he was pretty sure _Inspector Gadget_ had been around when he was growing up.

"Maybe we can catch a rerun?" Wanda suggested, helpfully.

"We can try," Erik said diplomatically. He had no idea what kind of channel showed reruns of children's cartoons from the 80s. "What's the big deal about this _Inspector Gadget_ anyway?"

"Mr Grey recommended it!" Pietro said, causing Wanda to squeal and tug at her brother's sleeve.

"Shhhh!"

Erik looked between his two children. Evidently, there was something 'Dad' wasn't supposed to know.

"Is Mr Grey your teacher?" he asked curiously.

"No!" they both exclaimed simultaneously.

Erik frowned, but otherwise did not betray any concern lest he scared the twins out of talking. Who was this adult his kids had been talking to?

"Where did you meet this Mr Grey?"

"The backyard."

Oh fuck. Erik was never letting the twins play in their garden alone ever again. Panic rising in his throat, he opened his mouth to ask them another question, but was interrupted by Wanda.

"His name isn't really Mr Grey," she told him seriously. "We just call him that because that's what colour he is."

"Oh, so he has grey hair?" Erik asked, trying to understand the cryptic language of five year olds.

"And grey skin and grey clothes and grey eyes," Pietro added. "Except when he walks in front of the hedge."

"Then he turns a little bit green," Wanda volunteered.

"Are you okay, dad?" Pietro asked.

Erik rubbed his eyes quickly and smiled at his son.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he said. "Why don't you and Wanda go turn the T.V. on?"

 

 

Erik waited until the dishwasher was running and the twins were well into an episode of _Tom & Jerry_, which they had deemed a worthy substitute to _Inspector Gadget_ , before he opened the dropdown ladder to the attic and ascended into the dusty space.

"Xavier?" he called. "I know you're up here."

That was only slightly a lie. He was still about 10% sure that he was simply losing his mind and ghosts weren't actually real.

Charles Xavier didn't reply, nor did he give any indication that he was even in the attic at all. The room looked exactly the same as it had that morning: the boxes were still stacked in a corner and the chess set was still laid out on the wooden stool. Erik walked further into the attic and peered at the chess board.

Someone had moved the white knight into check, thus freeing the white queen.

"Hi, Erik," said a small, British voice from behind him.

Erik whipped around to see a short man with an overly long fringe smiling weakly back at him. Although the man currently looked like he'd just stepped out of a black-and-white film, Erik recognised him immediately as the man from the polaroid.

"Charles Xavier?" he asked quietly, even though he knew the answer.

Charles nodded, his smile growing stronger.

Erik took a step forward.

"Don't you fucking dare go near my kids again," he said, and punched right through Charles' grey, ghostly face.

Charles didn't even flinch.

Erik gingerly lowered his arm.

"What did you expect to happen when you punched a ghost?" Charles asked, humour pinching at his lips.

"So you are a ghost," Erik confirmed, taking a step back again.

Charles rolled his eyes.

Erik's mind spun.

Then,

"How do I find the ghost of someone who died?" he asked quickly, almost stammering over his words.

Charles cocked his head and looked at Erik sadly.

"Not everyone becomes a ghost when they die," he said quietly.

Erik bit his lip.

"Who does?" Erik asked, his breath shallow.

Charles swallowed.

"Murder victims, mostly," he said, his voice thin. "People who die with unfinished business."

Erik's face went cold.

"Is there any chance someone who didn't-"

"I'm sorry."

Erik's chest suddenly felt very tight. He thought he might have heard Charles' voice distantly ask him if he'd like to sit down, before he felt the hardness of floorboards on the back of his legs and the feeling of a dusty nail studded to the floor underneath his left hand. He sat there for a minute, tracing the edge of the nail with his left index finger, until his fingertip was buzzing and his mind was clear.

He looked at Charles, who was now sitting cross-legged in front of Erik with a sad expression.

"I'm sorry for your loss," Charles said unexpectedly. "And I'm sorry about talking to your children without your permission. It just gets so awfully lonely and I thought children might be more receptive to the idea of ghosts than adults, what with their brilliantly developing minds and all."

Erik stared at the ghost for a minute.

"I'm sorry too," he said finally, his voice little more than a croak.

"For trying to punch me?" Charles asked with a sly smile.

"No," Erik said. "Actually, yes, that too. But I meant that I'm sorry for your loss."

Charles blinked and stared into the middle distance.

Oh fuck, was there some sort of faux pas surrounding mentioning the circumstances of death in front of the ghost in question?

Erik was just about to open his mouth to apologise again or maybe take his leave, when, out of nowhere, Charles suddenly snapped back into attention and looked at Erik with a smirk.

"I believe you're in check. Black move."

Erik smiled back.

"You're on."

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles does a bit of research into what being a ghost actually entails.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: ableist language, referenced alcohol abuse, referenced child abuse, vague description of a hospital death and more in the end notes.
> 
> this chapter is a Lot Lot Lot more angsty and potentially triggering. i don't want to put any spoilers here, but please please please see the end notes for trigger warnings (and spoilers) if you think you might get upset by mental illness themes.

 

 

 

 

 

"I think we should probably set some ground rules," Erik said, after a nifty couple of moves in which he managed to twist his way out of checkmate for the foreseeable future.

Charles raised a ghostly eyebrow but otherwise did not reply, apart from moving his knight in retreat.

"You can't talk to Pietro and Wanda anymore," Erik said, twisting a pawn in his fingers uncomfortably. "It's okay for me to go crazy but you can't do that to them."

"You know I actually do exist, right?" Charles said. "You're not hallucinating or anything."

Erik snorted, and took one of Charles' pawns.

"I don't care," he said, finally dragging his eye line up to look at Charles directly. "I don't want dead people talking to my kids. Is that too much to ask?"

Charles bit his lip.

"You're right," he said. "I'm sorry."

Erik exhaled a breath.

"And another thing," Erik continued. "Was it you who's been fucking around with my furniture and novel?"

Charles grinned sheepishly.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"A good idea," Erik repeated, in the cold humourless tone he used with the children when they had crossed a line from mischief into disobedience.

The tone seemed to have had an effect on Charles, who instantly stopped smiling and started worrying at his bottom lip again.

"It's my house," Charles pointed out petulantly, as he moved his queen out.

"Not anymore," Erik said, and he would have pushed the subject, but he felt kind of bad for this ghost who was probably two or three years younger than Erik was now when he'd died. About Magda's age.

"I'm sorry," Charles said, almost exasperatedly. "I assumed that's what ghosts did when new people moved into their old houses."

Erik was once again reminded of the ridiculousness of this entire situation, as he took Charles' knight with his queen. How the fuck did his life become this surreal?

"Checkmate."

Erik stared at the board in shock, as a smirking Charles tucked a silver tendril of hair behind his ghostly ear.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Erik?"

Erik looked up from his evening newspaper to see a tentative-looking Charles standing awkwardly at the end of his bed.

"Yes?" Erik asked, trying not to feel weird about sitting in Charles' bed while Charles stood.

"Could I possibly borrow your laptop, please?"

Erik narrowed his eyes.

"Alright," he said, but only because he knew Charles would use it when Erik had fallen asleep if he really wanted to.

Charles shifted his weight and continued to stare at Erik.

"Is there anything else?" Erik asked, peering over the rims of his reading glasses.

"Well," said Charles, dragging out the word in hesitation. "You're in my bed, aren't you?"

Erik pinked, and placed his newspaper on the bedside table.

"What of it?" he asked, crossing his arms.

"The attic is really rather uncomfortable," Charles continued, gracefully evading the question. "The dust gets all clogged up in my ectoplasm."

"I didn't realise ghosts needed to sleep," Erik remarked stiffly.

"No one _really_ needs sleep anyway," Charles retorted. "But it would be nice."

How the hell did Charles Xavier even reach the age of twenty on that logic?

"I can't imagine having a human body accidentally roll through you during the night would be much more comfortable than some dust," Erik commented, knowing full well that the moment he acknowledged Charles' request was the moment he'd involuntarily accepted it.

Charles smiled a brilliant wide smile.

"I'll go get your laptop, shall I?"

 

 

"Charles," Erik groaned into his pillow. "It's past midnight. What the hell are you doing on my laptop anyway?"

"This and that," Charles replied, cryptically. "Oh!"

Erik groaned again.

"Charles! At least turn the screen's brightness down, please," he mumbled into his pillow, where he could still see the neon-blue light seeping into his eye sockets. He was deeply regretting letting Charles use his laptop, let alone use it in his bed at half past midnight on a school night.

"Alright," Charles conceded, and Erik noticed, to his relief, a slight decrease in the light assaulting his sensitive eyes.

A few minutes later, Erik heard a high-pitched laugh next to him and felt the mattress shake.

"Ach du heilige Scheiβe, Charles!"

"Erik! Did you know there's an online dating website for ghosts?"

Erik rolled his eyes.

"No, I didn't know that," he said with a deadpan, giving up on sleep and sitting up, with his eyes still closed.

"Yeah, it's all on this website called 'Find Me Dead Friends Dot Net'. They have good resources for post-lifers."

"'Post-lifers?'" Erik repeated.

Charles chuckled.

"Dead people have a weird sense of humour," he said.

"Goodnight, Charles," Erik said pointedly, lying back down and pulling the duvet over his head.

"Wait!"

"What?" Erik replied, his voice muffled by the duvet.

"It says here that ghosts are only formed when people are killed with unfinished business and the only way to pass on to the next stage of existence is to finish said business," Charles said, reading something from the laptop.

"Okay," Erik replied. Helping Charles pass on to 'the next stage' seemed like a non-confrontational solution to this awkward sharing-bed arrangement.

"I need to talk to my sister," Charles said, seriously. "Could you invite her over tomorrow?"

Erik slowly exhaled a breath.

"Can't you go see her yourself?" he asked irritably. It wasn't that he didn't want to help Charles, but he didn't really want to intrude on a private moment between siblings.

"I can't leave this house, Erik," Charles replied.

"Really?"

Charles snorted.

"If I could leave, do you really think I'd stick around in the house where I kicked the bucket with you?"

Erik's face went cold. He pushed the duvet down to look at Charles directly.

"Charles, I'm sor-"

"It's fine," Charles interrupted. "Go to sleep."

Erik chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment, before replacing the duvet over his head and willing himself to relax.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Charles was gone when Erik woke up. Erik was so grateful he didn't even notice the fact that he hadn't woken up once throughout the whole night.

 

 

Raven knocked on Erik's door at ten, when the kids were at school, bringing only herself and a quizzical expression this time.

Erik wordlessly led her into living room, where Charles was waiting, fidgeting on the couch with his hands clasped in his lap. Raven didn't even look twice at her brother's ghost.

"What is it you wanted to tell me, then?" she asked Erik, taking a seat in the armchair and looking at Erik expectantly.

Erik glanced at Charles, who was staring wordlessly at his sister with his silver mouth ever so slightly open, revealing the tips of two dazzlingly white incisors.

"I, uh," Erik stammered, looking back at Raven.

"Raven?" Charles called suddenly, his voice keen with desperation. "Raven, can you see me?"

Raven smiled at Erik with a furrowed brow.

"Are you alright, Erik?" she asked with a light laugh. "You're looking a little pale."

"She can't see me," Charles exclaimed, standing up from the sofa and walking over to his sister, who was looking right through her brother to Erik on the other side of the room. "She can't bloody see me!"

Erik floundered.

"Erik," Charles said, turning around to face Erik with a pleading expression. "You must tell Raven that I'm sorry. Please, tell her that I'm sorry."

Erik gaped.

"I'm not doing that yet," he whispered to Charles. "I have to explain-"

"Do what yet?" Raven interrupted, standing up now. "Erik, what are you talking about?"

The room spun around Erik as he watched both Xavier siblings stare at him with an identical expectant expression. It was getting difficult to breathe, and he staggered, with great effort, to the sofa, where he sat down and put his head between his knees.

"Jesus, Erik, are you-"

"Bloody hell, do you want me to-"

"Everyone sit down and shut up right now!"

Raven and Charles looked at him stunned, before they each took a seat on either side of Erik, who was just now realising that he'd even spoken. Erik spent another half-minute in silence, as he gently rubbed the temples of his head and tried to formulate a sentence.

"Raven," he said, seriously, sitting up and looking at his friend. "My house is being haunted by your brother."

He heard Charles sniff pointedly behind him, but chose to ignore it.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Raven said slowly, and Erik didn't miss the way she subtly edged away from Erik on the sofa.

"Charles is a ghost," Erik said. "He needs to talk to you in order to, uh, pass on."

Raven's bottom lip trembled.

"This isn't fucking funny, Erik," she said. "You don't know a thing about Charles."

"I know that he plays chess," Erik replied. "And he wears lumpy cardigans and boat shoes. I know that he's sorry."

Raven darkened.

"Just because," she said, slowly and viciously. "Just because you got fucked up after your wife's death, doesn't mean you can project your bullshit onto my life."

Erik blinked.

"I have to go," Raven muttered, standing up from the sofa. "Goodbye, Erik."

_Tell her you know about the cellar puppets._

What?

"Raven, wait," Erik called, just as Raven had reached the living room doorway. "I know about the cellar puppets."

Raven's shoulders stiffened as she turned around.

_When Raven was six and I was nine-_

"When you were six and Charles was nine," Erik repeated.

Raven's face paled and her mouth dropped open.

_Mother had asked her to fetch some more 1992 single malt scotch whiskey from the cellar._

Erik frowned at the sound of the Xaviers' childhood, but nevertheless he relayed the message.

Raven stepped deliberately back into the room.

_Raven had always been scared of going down into cellar alone, so I agreed to go with her. When we got downstairs, however, we heard our step-brother giggle and a lock turn._

"You were locked in the cellar," Erik said, as Raven slowly sat back down on the couch.

_We were trapped in that cold dark cellar for over four hours. Raven was so scared of the dark back then, so I passed the time entertaining her with a puppet show. Mr and-_

"Mr and Mrs Wine, and baby Limoncello," Erik repeated.

Raven smiled weakly, and brushed away a tear with her sleeve, leaving a light line of mascara in its wake.

"They had an evil aunt," she said, with a sad laugh.

"Played by a magnum of champagne, right?" Erik asked, looking over at Charles, who was staring at his sister with a contemplative expression and a quivering lip.

"How did you know?" Raven asked, her voice very quiet.

"Charles has some unfinished business," Erik said. "He asked me to invite you here so he could say sorry."

Although, Erik mentally added. It seemed a little strange to apologise for one's own murder, but he wasn't going to intrude on Charles' message with his own irrelevant opinions.

_Tell her it wasn't her fault._

"He wants me to tell you it wasn't your fault," Erik said.

_Don't let her blame herself for what happened to me._

"Don't blame yourself for Charles' murder," Erik said.

Raven flinched.

"Murder?" she demanded, her voice a few notes higher than usual.

Oh fuck. Oh fuck, oh fuck. Did Raven not know the circumstances of Charles' death?

Erik glanced hastily over at Charles, who was desperately staring at the dark television screen instead of anywhere near the direction of Erik.

"Erik, Charles wasn't murdered," Raven said, frowning.

"Charles?" Erik asked, his voice feeling partially trapped in his throat. "Is this true?"

Charles still wasn't looking at Erik, but his grey face darkened by a few shades.

"Erik," Raven said softly, and for some reason Erik was suddenly reminded of the tone that the doctor had used when he'd come out of the operating theatre to tell Erik that they had done the best they could but Magda didn't make it through the surgery. "Charles overdosed. The doctors ruled it a suicide."

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: it is revealed in this chapter that charles committed suicide by overdose. no graphic descriptions, but i understand that this might upset readers


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik reels from this new information pertaining Charles' death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic is so slow burn im sorry im sorry
> 
> CHAPTER WARNINGS FOR: more vague discussion of suicide (nothing graphic)

 

 

 

 

 

The moment Raven had left and Erik had shut the front door behind her, Charles disappeared. Either he was still there in the hallway, but without projecting a physical presence, or he had retreated to the attic to avoid talking to Erik.

Charles hadn't said a word since before Raven had told Erik that Charles had killed himself. Erik really couldn't blame him. Speaking about emotions wasn't really his strong point either.

"I'm, uh, I'm gonna go work on my novel now," Erik said to the seemingly empty hallway, before he ducked into his study and shut the door. Logically, shutting his study door was pretty useless as Charles could walk through walls if he so wished, but Erik had an inkling that Charles would want to take the hint and give Erik some space.

It was weird. Charles had already been dead for a year before Erik even knew of him, and yet he felt an itch of betrayal and outrage at the base of his spine at the idea of Charles deciding to die. How could Charles have done such a thing? How could he have consciously left Raven alone like that?

Erik knew that he was being selfish, but once he'd started being angry he found that he couldn't stop. He found himself pacing around his study; he swore to himself; he broke three pencils and kicked his desk, succeeding in stubbing his toe and swearing a bit more.

After an hour or so, Erik gave up and collapsed on the floor of his study, too tired to bother with a chair.

Grief was exhausting.

At around two o'clock, Erik heard a knock on the study door. Slowly, he got up and opened it, to find an empty corridor. He glanced around the hallway, before noticing a sandwich on a plate on the floor.

Erik blinked. He hadn't even noticed that he'd skipped his typical quarter-past-one lunchtime.

Feeling bizarrely like he was stealing it, Erik picked up the plate and returned to his study, closing the door behind him.

 

 

At three-thirty, Erik left the study to go pick the twins up from school. He followed the usual routine of making them dinner, coercing them into eating their vegetables, and letting them play for a while before putting them to bed.

At eight, with nothing to do and no Charles to talk to, Erik retreated into bed and attempted to read the newspaper but the words kept spinning around the page and every black and white photograph reminded him of Charles.

At nine, he gave up and tried to go to sleep.

It was midnight when he gave up on that, and crept up the stairs of his house and pulled open the attic door.

Not bothering to turn on the lights, he climbed up the ladder and stepped into the darkness above.

"Charles?" he called out, quietly, lest he woke up the twins. "I know you're here."

No answer. Erik sighed.

"You're welcome to sleep in m- uh, in _the_ bed again," he told the darkness.

Still no answer.

Erik bit the inside of his cheek, and pawed around in the dark for the ladder back down. When he'd climbed to the bottom, he hesitated for just a second, before leaving the ladder down and the attic door open. He went back to his bedroom in silence and climbed back into bed, careful to stay on the left side.

A few minutes later, Erik felt the air next to him vibrate ever so slightly and the right side of the blanket slowly rise, but he did not dare open his eyes, let alone his mouth.

He was asleep in minutes.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The next morning, Erik woke up about as tired as he had been before going to sleep, but this time, he had a mission.

"Charles?" he asked the apparently empty bedroom.

No answer, but the air on the other side of the room seemed to shiver, like hot air above a toaster.

"Charles," Erik said again, hating how needy his voice sounded but carrying on anyway. "I want to talk to you. Please."

No response. Erik couldn't hear anything beyond the hum of the radiator and the ticking of his watch on the bedside table.

"I don't care how you died, Charles," Erik continued. "I just-"

And then he faltered, because the room had suddenly felt a lot colder and stiller and Erik had to stop himself from punching a wall in frustration.

 

 

A few more days of radio silence. Erik was starting to lose his mind.

 

 

"Charles," Erik announced to the living room, once the twins were at school. "We really need to talk."

There was no reply, neither was there an indication that Charles was even listening.

"Charles!" Erik barked, starting to lose his patience. "You're being fucking ridiculous. Stop avoiding me."

Erik all but threw his head into his hands and concentrated on not ripping the wallpaper off the walls in frustration. When he finally lifted his head, Charles had finally appeared, standing on the other side of the living room and twisting the end of one of his cardigan sleeves in his hands.

Erik's first instinct was to run over to the man and grab him by the elbow to stop him from disappearing again. Unfortunately, Charles was both a ghost and very skittish, so Erik had to be content with staring at him from three metres away.

Charles looked tired. Erik had no idea ghosts could even _be_ tired, but the evidence was there in charcoal grey bags under Charles' eyes and the soft, vulnerable way that Charles held his usually tightly smirking mouth.

"What do you want from me?" Charles asked, and it was a quiet, broken question that Erik thought he could never hate himself more than he did in that moment.

Erik faltered, his relief at seeing his friend again now replaced by a desperate fear as he scrambled for a way to make sure Charles stayed.

"I want to be able to help you."

(And maybe Emma Frost would tell him that he only wanted to help Charles to resolve some of his own issues pertaining a certain dead wife, but Erik thought it prudent not to think about that.)

Charles sighed.

"There's no point," he said, his voice retaining the same quiet listlessness. "There's no point in me even keeping my physical presence. I don't have any unfinished business. All I wanted was to say goodbye to Raven, but it didn't seem to help. I think I'm stuck here."

Erik was suddenly reminded of the fact that Charles Xavier was really quite young when he died.

"That's okay," he found himself saying.

Charles looked up at Erik, with a frown and his lips gently parted.

"I mean," Erik amended, rather awkwardly. "Sticking around can't be too bad. Who says you have to move on? We'll find things for you to do here."

Charles smiled a soft, unconvinced smile.

"What do you have in mind?"

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

It was actually quite difficult to find Charles something to do, since he wasn't physically able to leave the house, nor did either Erik or Charles even broach the idea of babysitting the twins.

Additionally, Charles was a terrible cook. He was even worse at cleaning.

("Really, Charles," Erik exclaimed. "Did you _ever_ mop a floor in your life?")

However, they found that Charles was half-way decent at paperwork, so Erik put him to work at handling his tax returns and electricity bills. It wasn't very glamorous, or even that interesting, but Charles seemed to perk up at the idea of being useful to Erik.

("I'm not forging your signature on these cheques, Erik."

"Why the hell not?" Erik replied, miffed.

Charles spluttered.

"Because it's bloody illegal!" he exclaimed.

Erik looked at Charles with a piercing, cryptic expression.

"Charles," he said slowly. "You have literally transcended the physical realm, and you're worried about committing a felony?")

 

 

In the evenings, when Erik was having dinner or playing with the children, Charles would take the time to peruse the online ghost forums on Erik's laptop. He seemed to be making friends over the internet, which was probably a good thing. It was the closest Charles could get to getting out of the house, anyway.

Still, Erik couldn't help but feel a little left out when Charles spoke about this online friend who had been a graduate student at the same university Charles used to attend.

"He died in the library, Erik!" Charles said gleefully. "I used to go there every other day. What a small world we live in."

Erik smiled unconvincingly. How was he supposed to react to that kind of information anyway?

"And now he's stuck in the library," Charles continued. "And I'm pretty sure he has to finish his PhD thesis before he can move on."

Charles laughed, and Erik felt his mouth loosen into a more convincing smile at the sound of it.

 

 

Erik wouldn't admit it, but the best evenings were when Charles closed the laptop and joined the Lehnsherr family in the living room to watch _Tom & Jerry_.

"Don't worry: they can't see or hear me," he would whisper to Erik, gesturing towards the kids, who were always sprawled on the floor, propped up on little elbows so they could see the screen while lying down. Charles would then settle gently on the sofa next to Erik, and Erik could almost swear he could feel the softest of pressures against his side as his ghostly friend leaned beside him.

"I still prefer _Inspector Gadget_ ," Charles would mumble and Erik would always smother a chuckle at that moment, and found himself wishing that the brush of Charles' hair against his cheek when Charles rested his head on Erik's shoulder was palpable enough to be real.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [paranoidsteve.tumblr.com](http://www.paranoidsteve.tumblr.com/)


End file.
